


Sioux Falls:  Timestamp for "Traverse"

by thestoryinsideme



Series: Traverse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant through 9.09, F/M, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Spoilers for Season 9, Timestamp, dean/cas - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestoryinsideme/pseuds/thestoryinsideme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam Winchester leaves Dean and Castiel at the bunker to visit with Sheriff Jody Mills, he finds some peace of mind and a little bit more.  This is a timestamp for the full length story "Traverse" and takes place during/after chapter 22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sioux Falls:  Timestamp for "Traverse"

“So angels.  Those are a thing too.” 

It isn’t actually a question, since Jody Mills has taken the news of the existence of angels here on earth with the same grain of salt that she did when Sam told her about dragons.  Sam just shrugs and nods and continues to eat the best chili he has ever had.

"This is really good Jody.”  Sam sits back and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “You didn’t have to. Thank you.”

Jody smiles from across the table.  “There are exactly two things I do well. Making chili is one of them.”

“And what’s the other one?”

“You have to ask?”  She looks over at the coat rack where her sheriff’s jacket hangs beside her holstered gun belt.

“Ahh, of course.” 

“More?” 

Sam thinks about all the red meat he has deprived himself of over the years.  “That would be great.  Thanks.”

Jody takes the bowl into the kitchen. “So this angel Castiel, he’s staying with you and Dean now?”

Sam smirks.  When he arranged with Jody to come stay in Sioux Falls for a while, he  gave her the Reader’s Digest version of the angel and demon happenings with the promise of the full, unedited rendition to follow upon his arrival.  Now that he is here, he’s not sure where to begin.

“Actually, he’s with Dean.”  That’s as good a place to start as any.

“Well, yeah, of course.  Until you go back to the bunker.”  Jody sets the second helping of chili down in front of Sam and settles into the chair at the head of table next to him.

Sam pushes his spoon into the bowl and twirls it around.  “I mean, he’s _with_ Dean.”

It takes a few seconds, but Sam can see the moment Jody comprehends what he just told her.  “Well, I can’t wait to meet him,” she finally says.

“That’s it?”

“Is Dean happy?”

Sam nods.  “I think he is.  I’m pretty sure he is.  He’s not exactly an open book.” 

“But you, you can tell.”

“Yes, I can,” Sam admits.  “I’d say Cas makes him happy.”

She shrugs.  “Then what else is there to say?”

“You’re not, I don’t know, shocked? Stunned?  A little bit surprised at least?”

“Not really, no.  More surprised about the angel part than anything else.” Jody narrows her eyes and grins slightly.  “And I have a feeling that you weren’t either.”

Sam shakes his head once.  “Ever since I can remember I’ve known that Dean has had a certain, uh, I guess you might call it an appreciation, for men, even though he was always burying himself in women.  But I’m pretty sure he never acted on it, and I don’t think he ever would have if Cas hadn’t come along.  They’re great together, it’s like they were made for each other. But I worry about him.”

“About Dean?  What do you worry about?”

“Well, the hunter community is not exactly…tolerant.”

Jody sighs, sits back in her chair. “Look, Sam, I’m no stranger to prejudice.  I’m a woman sheriff in the Midwest and I had to fight my way up the deputy ladder to get here. But there was nothing any small-minded homespun misogynist could say or do that could stop me once I knew that this was what I was meant to do with my life.”

Sam chuckles.  “I’m guessing you kicked some ass.”

“Only ass that needed kicking.  My point is that your brother – he is a man of conviction.  The righteous man. Isn’t that what you told me the angels called him?  And there is nothing in this world more righteous than loving who you love without giving a damn about whatever the hell anyone else thinks or says about it. Nothing.”

The Sheriff plants her elbow on the table and rests her chin in her hand.  “But there’s more,” she observes.  “Something else is bothering you.  Some other problem.” 

Sam shoves a spoonful of chili into his mouth to avoid responding while he considers his options.  He can give her the information he promised her and spare her the details about him and Dean.  He can let her continue to believe that his relationship with Dean is “something special” as she had described it when they dealt with the goddess Vesta, or he can be honest with her about everything.  Come clean, so to speak.

He swallows, immediately scoops up another mouthful of food, then another. He watches Jody watch him.  She waits patiently beside him, angled toward him, close but not too close, giving him the time he has asked her for without words.

When the bowl is empty he pushes it away, wipes his palms along the length of his thighs, and nods.  “There’s a lot,” he says to her.  “And it goes back.  Way back.”

Jody’s face softens into the kindest expression Sam has seen in years, and his decision is made.  There is no one who knows everything about Sam, not even Dean, and it’s time to change that.  “But I’d like to tell you about it.  Talking it out with a neutral party may help.  It just might…take some time.”

“We’ve got all the time you need, Sam,” she says.

 

They don’t dive right into the heavy stuff. Sam decides that piecemeal is the way to go.  Sharing with someone a lifetime of supernatural experiences, along with the hefty emotional baggage packed along the way, takes time.  Instead he tries on the deputy uniform that Jody has waiting for him, snaps a photo and sends it to Castiel, who texted him during _Return of the Jedi_ and continued to send messages throughout his _Star Wars_  movie marathon with Dean.

He starts from the beginning.  While he and Jody attend the county fair he talks with little interruption.  They play games on the midway, eat cotton candy, and Sam discovers that not only is it much easier to discuss his nomadic childhood and absent father while riding a giant ferris wheel, but that there is another thing Jody Mills does well.

“You’re a good listener,” he tells her.

She blushes, touches his arm.  “You’re easy to listen to, Sam Winchester.”

They’re hiking along the Big Sioux River when he tells her about Jess and Stanford.  It’s not as difficult as he expected it to be, and he wonders if maybe he is getting over it, if he is finally letting go. 

Most of it comes out while they’re eating. Breakfasts that include fruit instead of bacon, dinners at the kitchen table or local diner, snacks in the family room on the couch, the television on but ignored, serving only as background noise to the non-stop conversation between the two of them.

It feels good to do this, to get it all out, and Sam wishes he had done it years ago.  Then again, he realizes, he never could have.  There was no one other than Dean to talk to, and every conversation he tried to start with Dean was a dead end.  Bobby was more of a father than a confidante, and Castiel – well he was never even an option until recently.  It’s not all one-sided.  Jody talks about her life too.  About her husband and her son Owen, about growing up in foster care.

When Sam brings up Dean, what happened with Gadreel and Kevin and everything that came after, he and Jody are fishing in a small lake about thirty miles from Sioux Falls.

“So when you said I could stay until I was ready to go back to the bunker, the thing is, I don’t know if I will ever be ready to go back.”  Sam leans back in the canoe and wedges the fishing pole between the seat and his thigh. “I don’t know if I even want to go back, not to live anyway.  And it’s not because of my issues with Dean, but because of my issues with myself. It’s not what I want. Him and Cas, it’s a home for them, and I’m really happy about that, I am, but it’s not for me. It never was.”

“Well, you always have a job here if you want,” Jody offers.  “Most of the creatures of the night we deal with are of the drunken human variety, but your expertise sure would come in handy for those other occasions.”

Sam’s not sure what it is.  Maybe it’s the way she baits the hook without flinching, or how she laughs and grabs onto both sides of the canoe to make it teeter in the still water in a playful attempt to throw him off balance. But more likely than not it’s the way she smiles up at him, even now, after everything he has told her; after all that she knows about him, about who he is and what he has done. Whatever it is, it makes him feel something he hasn’t felt in a very long time.  Something he hasn’t felt since Jess, something he never came close to feeling with Amelia.  It makes him want to stay.

He realizes he’s been staring when Jody says “what? What is it, Sam?”

“I was just thinking,” he says.

“About?”

“About this.”  He leans forward and places his lips against hers.  She leans back slightly, but she does not object, and the chaste kiss is quick and gentle. 

“Oh,” she says when Sam pulls away.

“No?”  Sam asks.

“I’m way older than you, Sam.  Like eight, maybe ten years older.  Old enough to be your, uh, big sister.”

“Cas is thousands of years older than Dean. You approve of that.”

She grins.  “Okay, okay.  There’s no possible way I can argue with that kind of flawless logic.”

Sam laughs.  She is, by far, the most authentic person he has ever met, and being herself is, he notes, a fourth thing that she does well.

“Then yes?”  Sam raises his brows and waits for her response.

“Have you met yourself?  Yes.  Always, yes.”

Sam lurches forward a bit more enthusiastically than intended, and he accidentally knocks Jody onto her back while his fishing pole flips into the water.  He reaches for it instinctively but misses, and the boat seesaws precariously from side to side.  He falls onto his hands and knees over Jody in an attempt to stabilize the vessel, and after several moments, the motion slows to a gentle rocking.

“Wow,” he says.  “Wouldn’t have been a very romantic moment if we ended up in the water.”

Jody laughs.  “I’ve got two decades of Lifetime movies in my head that say otherwise.”

“Oh, then should we go in?” 

“Nah.”  She shakes her head.  “There’s nothing Lifetime movie about you or me.”

“Or you _and_ me.”  Sam dips his head closer to hers.

“So Good Guys,” she says.  “I take it those are a thing too.”

Sam kisses her.  This time it is a mutual and earnest endeavor, and Sam finds one more thing that Jody Mills does well.  

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://thestoryinsideme.tumblr.com//) here!


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